I would consider myself a skeptic of the notion that the US will engage in a hot war with China anytime soon. But I'd still say it's a non-zero chance - high enough that I think it's something we should all think about. Because if the US does engage in a hot war, I'm 100% the US military will absolutely get their ass handed to them on the battlefield.

So if a hot war happens, the US will eventually be faced with a choice: either accept the biggest military humiliation the country has ever experienced (by far), or start firing off the nukes. Given where we're at today, I feel pretty strongly that American exceptionalism, worship of civic religion, and Americans' lack of experience with death and devastation means it won't be hard for the ruling class to stir up pro-nuke sentiment. Even if it means there's a real chance that China fires off nukes that hit the US.

So I think one thing we need to do (if you're a US American or Australian) is remind people that nuclear war is beyond horrific. This video I think covers this all pretty well. But I also have to give a massive content warning, as naturally the content is gruesome and disturbing.

We also need to really destroy these myths US Americans hold about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I like how Ethan said on the Proles pod about nuclear war:

So, we have to retell this story of "they dropped the bomb to save lives", because it's really frightening to grasp the idea that the government and the military and the powers that be that govern our lives that are currently in charge of everything would sacrifice so many innocent lives. And not just kill people, just do some of the most horrific things that have happened to human beings. They would do that for a political bargaining chip. They wouldn't do that to end the war, they were doing it to strongarm a country they thought they'd be fighting soon.

  • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Too intertwined at the moment. There were already calls to localize supply chains under Trump, and the on-going headaches with shipping and the growing war drums with China have increased those calls. Plus, automation and better development in Latin America gives the US options for cheaply making things somewhere besides China. Expect a lot of things to start being made in Mexico, Guatemala, etc. instead to avoid those links.

    Taiwan is the big flashpoint because the US strategy seems to be to let them make all of their semiconductors. It's a huge vulnerability, but they have to have an outpost.

    I know we like to say our government is fascist now, and it is, but the pure suicidality of regimes like the third reich cannot be underestimated.

    The US is past fascism imo. Capitalism has been in a true terminal crisis since about World War 1 because that's when the Imperial powers ran out of new markets to add (land to plunder). Fascism was like a suicide mission to try to reset the clock. We know that doesn't work because blowing up the planet doesn't make there be more stuff. What comes next is what came after the fall of Rome - the system eating itself breaks down trade networks, which makes commodity production collapse (can't sell shit if you can't get it to market). Commodity estates collapse and can't pay their debts and taxes, city dwellers can't get paid so they go back to the countryside to try to grow food. To avoid getting killed by a bandit, they swear loyalty to a wealthy patron who owns an estate that he lets them farm in exchange for some labor time - i.e. they become serfs.

    Tl:Dr is that the future isn't fascism - it's techno feudalism. You'll live in a company town and work at the battery plant or geothermal greenhouse in exchange for a pod and rations, but it'll only be like 40 hours a week and the local Lord will give you a feast when he makes a profitable NFT sale or kills a rival in the metaverse.